Before The Hobbit, there was Gorbo the Snerg.

Gorbo returns from hunting in the forest.
"The Marvellous Land of Snergs" was the last of eight books written by E.A. Wyke-Smith (1873-1935). It was published in 1925, pre-dating J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" by ten years. The book tells the tale tells the story of two small children, Joe and Sylvia, who have been rescued from their awful lives by Miss Watkyns, who runs the Society for the Removal of Superfluous Children, and transported to the relative safety of the Land of Snergs.
The Snergs are a robust and helpful race of short people "only slightly taller than the average table'', who provide a number of services to the children's refuge. There, the two children, who are always up to mischief, meet Gorbo, an opininated and self-confident Snerg, and together they embark on a series of adventures.
I should like to record my own love and my children's love of E. A. Wyke-Smith's "The Marvellous Land of Snergs", at any rate to the Snerg element in that tale, and of Gorbo, the gem of dunderheads, jewel of a companion in an escapade…(The story) was probably an unconscious source-book for the Hobbits…J.R.R. Tolkien
Gorbo foolishly takes the children to the see the forest of Twisted Trees, where they become hopelessly lost. They find their way into an underground cavern and begin a long and sometimes frightening journey.
Along the way, they encounter a forest inhabited by friendly cinnamon bears,
a pathetically cowardly knight called Sir Percival, a reformed ogre, Golithos,
who is trying to mend his ways (he longer eats children and has become a
vegetarian) and a wicked witch named Mother Meldrum.
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